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Here in New York, I look closely at shoe shine men and wonder if I might not see someone I know. The times are that bad, perhaps. A few friends who follow the stock market from an armchair perspective have taken to sending me emails that are abysmal portents of doom with subject lines like 30 reasons why this is the worst depression known to man — no hyperbole there. Is my Pollyanna about to meet Dr. Doom, I ask myself, half kidding aloud and dead serious to myself.

Sitting in bed in NY, I checked my emails and a friend and my good neighbor had a near fatal accident and thankfully is writing me from home on the mend and I know the worst thing you could know is that someone you count on to be there would one day not be while watching an industry made of paper wealth collapse isn’t the end of the world. But still, change is always been wrest upon me always at the moment I thought I had come to calm. What goes on?

Is the continuing lesson uncertainty rules? Don’t get too smug thinking you have arrived because you will never get there – like yesterday at the wee hours of the morning when I woke in the dark, got to Grand Central Station to take my train, got comfy in my seat, put my head against the window to find sleep again, and the announcer said, “Train to Stamford has changed to Track 23” and suddenly the rush of everyone jumping from their seats and running to the next train – is that life? – just when you think…. get up, get up, get up and run….?

Ah well, hopefully I am around long enough to come back to all of this and connect the dots with wisdom. It does seem as if life sped up around 45 years of age and what appears on the other side of 45 is a sense of layering on arguments against everything I learned before.

It makes me think of my 93 year old grandmother who made us Better Than Sex cake at Thanksgiving and couldn’t help repeating the name of the cake over and over despite the fact that she had never said sex aloud the 92 years before. An opening is how I saw it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.